Speaking of Sounds
by JealousOfTheMoon
Summary: What's the most frightening sound you've ever heard? A bit of humor with the Took's family. Where's the category for fluff?


Just a bit of drabbley oneshot. Written because I felt like it. And I am Pervinca Took, in a way.

As always, my writing is utterly clean.

Disclaimer: Wonderful characters are most sadly not my own. But I don't grudge Tolkein one bit. Really, I don't.

**Speaking of Sounds...**

Walking home with a dirty face, a grass-stained dress, and muddy arms and legs went a young hobbit lass, her hands full of wildflowers. One dirty, bare foot kicked at a pebble as she progresses down the road towards her home. Every so often, she pauses and listens. Sometimes her eyes grow large in her head, but gradually decrease to match the proportions of her face as she recognizes the evening noises—crickets chirping, a solitary bird trilling away rather annoyingly (or so she thought), and the occasional, ominous crackling noise from the hedges along the road.

Pushing open the large, round, yellow door which leads to what she considers "home," she is greeted by loud calls of "Vinca! Where've you been?"

"Takin' a ramble," she replies somewhat carelessly. "Met a strange sound near the gulch—slid under a fence to avoid it." The latter remark offered as an explanation for her grass-stained attire.

"That's odd," Thain Paladin Took—known to her as "Papa"—remarks with an odd twitch around his mouth. "The best way _I_ ever heard of for escapin' sounds is plugging your ears."

Her sisters, Pearl and Nellie, hoot at this. Mother tries to keep a grin from flashing across her face, while young Pip—a strapping lad of 7 with an appetite of a tweenager in a famine—looks blissfully ignorant whilst consuming a biscuit.

"How do you meet a sound, anyway?" Nel asks. Her mouth twitching, she looks shockingly like her father.

"You hear it, of course!" Indignation was creeping into Vinca's tone.

"Whoever heard of sliding under a fence for a silly old sound, anyway?" Pearl asks no one in particular.

"I know someone who heard of such a thing." Pervinca fixes her eyes on her older sister with all the rage possible of a sensitive twelve-year-old. "You did. From me."

The Thain chokes on his pipe. "Er, what's the most frightening sound you've ever heard, Nel?"

"When my dress made a funny scratching noise—it was caught on something—and I thought it was torn. That was terrifying." Nel said with such sincerity that no one in the room laughed or doubted it. "What about you, Pearl?"

"The most terrifying noise…when Mother spilled burning porridge all over her hands. I can still hear her screams." Pearl smiled smugly to herself at having found the highest-ranking in the "human interest" department.

"I was most terrified tonight," Vinca announced loudly. "If I hadn't been I wouldn't have soiled my dress." This last statement was made with a somewhat frantic glance at her mother, as if it was an attempt to justify all the work Eglantine Took would be spending tomorrow at the laundry basin, trying to get the green to come out of the blue. "It was the _most frightening_ noise you _ever_ did hear—or at least that _I_ ever did hear. Sounded like a large, large _predator._"

"Probably a coney," Nel muttered.

"Since when are coneys considered predators?" Pearl responded with a smirk.

"What about you, Papa?" the girl in the grass-stained dress queried, blessedly ignorant of the conversation her older sister s were holding.

"Your Papa," the Thain responded, "Never gets frightened."

"I'll tell you girls what was the most frightening sound to your Papa," his wife piped up, a mischievous grin plastered on her face. "It happened the night he met me, at the Midsummer Fair down on the green. When he was askin' me to dance for the first time, his voice came out as the most pitiful squeak you ever did hear—sounded like he was about to up and keel over from lack of oxygen. As soon as he heard his own voice, he like to about fainted: his eyes expanded, and he looked absolutely horrified at himself. I accepted him out of pity. Good thing I did…" she gazed lovingly at her husband, who was blushing from more than embarrassment.

"Hoy!" Pip's voice burst out, breaking the silence. "'Nother biscuit, please, Mama."

"Mercies' sake, does this lad have an appetite! Why, he's had six biscuits already! If this boy asks for one more biscuit…" She stopped, laughed, and continued. "If this boy asks me for one more biscuit, that'll be the most frightening sound in the world."


End file.
